Sioux Falls business leaders can hear a first-hand account May 28 of how Joplin, Mo., businesses are still recovering from an EF-5 tornado that hit in 2011.

Gary Duncan, retired president and CEO of Freeman Health System of Joplin, will be the keynote speaker at an SDN Communications Uptime University event. The series hosts industry experts to help businesses keep network data running efficiently and securely. Duncan's speech will be followed by a panel of experts addressing business continuity and disaster recovery.

Duncan will take participants through the aftermath of the tornado that dropped on a muggy May afternoon, carving a 13-mile path through the community, killing 158 people and leaving behind billions of dollars in destruction. That included serious damage to Freeman Health's competing hospital and left Duncan's hospital as the only facility able to respond. The physicians who treated 1,000 people in 18 hours had to contend with flooded rooms, power outages and even difficulties identifying patients.

"I don't know if anyone is prepared for a calamity of this scope," Duncan said. "No one here, at the time, had any idea how big it was."

Duncan had just participated in a disaster drill days before the tornado, which affected how he was able to lead the health system through the many challenges it faced. Duncan will share the lessons his hospital and the community learned through dealing with the disaster.

SDN Communications CEO Mark Shlanta said businesses of any size will benefit from Duncan's message and the panel's discussion.

"The statistics of business survival following a disaster are daunting," Shlanta said. "But there are some simple, affordable steps we can all take to improve the odds, especially when it comes to protecting critical business data."

The 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. free lunch event is limited to 100 people. Businesspeople interested in registering can send an email to marketing@sdncommunications.com.